Talk:Tracksource

Copyright legalities and the CC license

Tracksource does not legally exist. No responsibilities, no rights. The only true concern about Tracksource data is their origin, eg.: Google.

There is nothing Tracksource can legally do against anyone using their data, let alone against the maps' true authors.

According to copyright laws in Brazil, the volunteers creating the maps are the true owners of each individual map Tracksource mapsets are made of since Tracksource does not exist, thus no contract or agreement can be made.

Another problem with the Tracksource licence is that until 03/09/2007 the license was GPL, which forbids restrictive changes made after unless the authors state that by legal means. The current licence was imposed by means of a poll (majority said yes to CC), but some opposed. This is irregular since only the author can change the licence of one's work. Thus, Tracksource CC licence is actually not valid for all mapa data.

They're all in portuguese but any translation service can provide a decent translation.

Thus, I suggest a rewrite to state that the Creative Commons licence only applies to the material Tracksource puts up in their website (eg.: compiled maps, POI alert files, etc.) and not to the source editable maps from the map authors.

I was following all your points there, and it seemed to be adding up to a messy situation in which the license is really not clear. I know some Data working group were forced to investigate, and they concluded that we can't use the data. How is google involved?

...and then your final suggestion... I'm confused by that. Where does that come from? We can't just write that it's all OK because we want to all be OK.

It sounds like there have been lively discussions within the tracksource community. It seems to me that the way forwards here has to be re-starting these discussion within the tracksource community in relation to OpenStreetMap. I suggest the Brazilian community get on there and campaign for, re-licensing to a compatible license (best case scenario) or at least clearer licensing. For example if the CC license really only applies to the downloads, then what is the license of the raw data? and can that be more clearly stated on the website? tracksource should treat their contributor community with respect by stating the license under which they are contributing (campaign for this). And if that is a restrictive license, could there be a way that users declare their individual contributions to be more openly licensed somehow, adding a label to their account, and preferably to their bits of data, so that at least parts of the tracksource database might be useable (campaign for this).

By being very clear on our website (this wiki page) that we cannot use data from tracksource with the license as it currently is, we are supporting this campaign. Please link the tracksource community to this page, and say "Look at this. We need to be more clear about the license" (an accurate translation of the page would surely be a good idea too)